Random rant about Hmong people living in Vietnam vs Thailand/Laos

While my Hmong people are hiding and running for their lives in Laos and Thailand, I am so amazed with the Hmong people’s lives in Vietnam. Many Hmong people are tourist guides for visitors in Sapa, Vietnam. I am greatly astonished since I usually hear negative news from the media about how Hmong people are tortured and living that way in Southeast Asia.

Here is a wonderful article about Hmong in Vietnam

http://trekking-in-sapa.com/northern-mountains-of-vietnam/

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Police: Search turns up head of slain Calif. man

LOS ANGELES — Authorities searching a Long Beach park found the final missing body part — a severed head — believed to belong to a community college student killed and dismembered in a double murder-for-profit plot in Orange County, police said Sunday.

FBI agents and police from Costa Mesa and Long Beach searched El Dorado Park with cadaver dogs for two days before finding the head thought to be Samuel Herr, 26, on Saturday, Costa Mesa police Sgt. Patrick Wessel said.

An arm and hand were found at the park Friday, and authorities had said the head was the only body part still missing. A coroner will officially determine whether the remains were Herr, Wessel said.

Herr's Costa Mesa neighbor Daniel Wozniak, 26, is accused of killing and dismembering Herr and killing Herr's friend Juri Kibuishi for money.

Wozniak was charged with two counts of murder Friday, just hours before he was scheduled to get married in another Long Beach park.

He was being held without bail Sunday at Orange County Jail. He was scheduled to be arraigned by videoconference Tuesday.

Investigators believe Herr was shot and killed in a theater at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base. His torso was found in the theater's attic May 21.

Authorities have not said why the two were at the base. However, Herr was an Army veteran who had served in Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. He and Kibuishi were both students at Orange Coast College.

Authorities allege Wozniak shot Herr, then cut off his head, left arm and right hand. Investigators said Wozniak told them where to find the torso.

Wozniak also is accused of shooting Kibuishi after summoning her with a text message on Herr's phone. Authorities believe Wozniak removed Kibuishi's clothes to fake a sexual assault. Herr's father found her body in Herr's apartment May 22.

Wozniak, a stage actor, had recently appeared in the leading role in the musical "Nine" at the Hunger Artists Theater Company in Fullerton. He had money problems, and police believe the motive was financial.

Wozniak had been scheduled to marry Rachel Buffet, one of his "Nine" co-stars, on Saturday.

Police detained a 17-year-old boy Wednesday after he withdrew nearly $2,000 from Herr's bank account, money the boy said was for Wozniak, Costa Mesa police said. Detective Sgt. Ed Everett said the boy was not considered an accessory to the murders but may be charged with other crimes. His name was withheld because he is a minor.

Wozniak's father, Daryl Wozniak, said his son tried to commit suicide after his Wednesday arrest and was treated at Western Medical Center.

Daryl Wozniak said his son never showed any violent tendencies or psychological problems but stopped accepting his phone calls six months ago.

Two other people, Daniel Wozniak's brother Timothy Wozniak and Buffet's brother Noah Buffet, were arrested for investigation of being accessories after the fact. However, Everett said Sunday authorities have since determined neither was involved with the case, and he said neither is expected to be charged.

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Cha Yang Running for Mee Moua’s Seat in Minnesota Senate

Veterans affairs rep wants more jobs for East Side

Updated: Tuesday, 01 Jun 2010, 10:29 AM CDT
Published : Tuesday, 01 Jun 2010, 10:29 AM CDT

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Cha Yang, a representative with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, announced his candidacy Tuesday for the Minnesota State Senate. Yang is seeking the District 67 seat vacated by Sen. Mee Moua.

The District 67 seat is the highest political office held by any Hmong-American.

“Serving in the Minnesota Senate has given me the opportunity to have experiences and break down barriers that I never could have imagined,” Moua said last month, when she announced she wouldn’t seek re-election.

Cha Yang, a Democrat, said jobs, jobs and more jobs will be the focus of his campaign.

“The people of the East Side and the people of this great state of Minnesota have spoken and we say: Jobs, jobs and more jobs,” Yang said.

Yang also lists K-12 education, health care, high education funding, parks improvement and public safety as his priorities.

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The "Secret War"

Memorial Day is a time to honor all United States veterans who served in the military. But there's a group of Vietnam vets living in America who do not always receive the honor they deserve.

In the early 1960's the United States involvement in the Vietnam War was escalating and Communism was spreading throughout Southeast Asia.

If the Communists siezed control of Laos, the U.S. government feared they could take over the entire region.

President John F. Kennedy asked the CIA to quietly recruit and train thousands of Hmong people living in the mountains of Laos to help fight the Communist organization, known as the Pathet Lao.

It was known as the "Secret War" because Laos was a neutral country and it would be considered an act of war if the U.S. put troops on the ground there.

The Hmong soldiers, led by General Vang Pao, already resisted the Pathet Lao but did not have the means to fight back.

But armed with American weapons and training the Hmong people became a formiddable fighting force who greatly helped the United States by fighting the Communists on an infamous military supply route.

"The American CIA wanted to stop spread of Communism around the world and the United States President John F. Kennedy asked the King of Laos for help in blocking the Ho Chi Minh Trail", said Laos veteran Nao Shoua Xiong.

When the U.S. pulled out of the war in 1975, the Hmong people were targeted by the Pathet Lao because they helped the United States. The Hmong had to flee their own country or likely face death. Many of them went to Thailand and lived in refugee camps.

In the late 1970's the U.S. military brought many of them to America to have a chance at a better life. And their contributions in the Vietnam War are something many people don't know about.

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Consumer electronics do not cure poverty

THE advent of low-cost electronic goods has been a boon for the world's poor. You can ride hours down a dusty road in Togo past mud-brick medieval farmhouses and find an internet cafe where locals keep in touch with their relatives in Europe. You can hike up into the mountains of northwest Vietnam and find Hmong villagers playing music on a Casio keyboard, powered by a flywheel spun by rivulets of water flowing down the mountainside. In Burma and Nepal, cheap Chinese solar cells plugged into car batteries let villagers watch TV when the unreliable national power grid fails. But none of this means these people aren't poor anymore. Those Togolese may be eating nothing but yams for months at a time. The Hmong may be illiterate and stunted. The Burmese and Nepalese may be driven by indigence to sell their daughters.

Yesterday Jamelle Bouie dinged Robert Samuelson for engaging in the consumer-electronics poverty dodge. "Although many poor live hand-to-mouth," Mr Samuelson wrote, "they’ve participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 percent had microwaves, 79 percent air conditioning and 48 percent cellphones." Let's put this as succinctly as possible: 30% of Haitians have mobile phones. And in fact, if you're a Haitian with an income in the upper quartile and have a mobile phone, you may not consider yourself poor, in your social context. But if you were an American who was abruptly required to live on an upper-quartile Haitian income, cell phone and all, I'm fairly confident you'd feel pretty poor.

Addendum: Luke Kelly in comments raises a valid issue, so let me make the Haitian point clearer. Last week "This American Life" aired a terrific report on NGOs in Haiti. Reporters Adam Davidson and Chana Joffe-Walt of "Planet Money" talked to a farmer named Gelene Germeus who earns about $600 a year. She can only afford to send one of her daughters to school. She owns the following: a shack; a hard dirt field; two mango trees, the source of her income; and a mobile phone.

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